


I Am the Winter

by Kikari



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Angst, F/M, Failed Rekindling, Past Relationship(s), it is still christmas after all, the solemn reflective energy of midnight mass, with a sprinkling of doting dad sephiran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28765203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikari/pseuds/Kikari
Summary: Altina could not mistake his face. If he would eschew honestly in the day, perhaps instead she would find her answers on a frigid winter night.But reunions do not always ensure reconnection.
Relationships: Orudina | Altina/Sephiran
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	I Am the Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Gerome (@sorenfucks) for beta reading!

It’s deep into the night following the beginning of Askr’s winter celebrations, as the stars amass in the sky behind pockets of clouds matching the soft, downy snow accumulating on the castle rooftop. The festivities had long since died for the day, allowing Altina some manner of peace as she searched the grounds. It’s there, as she climbs the spiraling staircase of the turret, that Altina finally locates him. She had spent much of the evening in search of him, the man who was most assuredly her beloved, despite his interjections otherwise. She would not be left in the dark by him. 

“Lehran?”

Sephiran turns to her. There is no surprise in his movements nor his face when their eyes meet. Only an exterior of stoicism. “Lady Altina.” He welcomes her with a smile and gentle bow. “Forgive me for asking again, but may you refer to me as Sephiran?” 

He’s giving her another mindful deflection, though one less dishonest as he had before. Perhaps there is less need to lie in the absence of their shared descendent. Surely he knows she could see through him.

“Sephiran… then.” She says, hesitant from its unfamiliarity.

In contrast, Sephiran moves the conversation forward quickly, as if not noticing her discomfort. “Have you been enjoying the winter festivities, my lady?” He says. Casual despite knowing why he must have been sought out. “The empress was quite ecstatic to spend time with you. I believe it brought her more joy than any mere trinket I could provide.”

_“Trinket” surely undersold the extent of his efforts_ , Altina thought. Sephiran had spared little effort in his many gifts to the empress. Plush toys, candied nuts, hair adornments, and fanciful tomes were all provided to her during the celebrations. Still Sephiran's words spoke to Altina’s importance to her descendent nonetheless. 

Altina smiles as she thinks of Sanaki in all her childish excitement and nervous insecurities. She did not understand the peculiarities of all her concerns: a lack of prophetic connection to the Goddess or martial strength at her young age. They were qualities Altina certainly never had herself. Rather, she saw the strength of heart she already had, and the good company surrounding her.

“It was quite... fulfilling meeting her.” She hums. “Knowing all that she represents. And she is quite a charming lady in her own right.” 

Her words bring forth the first genuine smile of the evening upon his face. The empress appeared to have that consistent effect on him, whereas her own visage, even when with young Sanaki, brought a barely constrained tension to his eyes. Something he couldn't quite manage to squirrel away.

“Yes, charming is a good word." He says with that smile. "I have been by her side for quite a while now and the empress is quite good at getting what she desires.”

“Mm…” Altina makes a sound in acknowledgement. “You said prior you were the servant of Lady Sanaki? You must be very knowledgeable of Tellius’s history.” She remarks with a knowing lit. This was her opportunity to dig deeper. She had let him steer this conversation with pleasantries enough. There was much unexplained she _needed_ answers to. “If I may, I have some questions regarding _your era_ that I would like to ask of you.”

He raises a hand to his chest in deference, calm and distant. “Please my lady, ask and I will do my utmost to give you an answer.”

Altina lets out a sigh. She was worried Lehran would remain completely obstinate to her probing. She could tolerate impersonal at least for now. 

“Very well, may you tell me of what has happened in the ages since my departing? The people of Tellius here…” She raises a hand to her chin, finding a way to describe the strangers that she had come to pass, “they’re quite different from those of ages past. Men who now wield the blades the Goddess had trusted me with, individuals with strange marks unrelated to the dark arts, even some of the herons I have met have changed.” 

She gives him a subtle prod before she continues, her brows furrowing at recollections of the day’s festivities. Altina deeply wishes to know how history's course shaped following their triumph, but she's nervous of the answer all the same. “Tell me, Sephiran, are these developments of peace, or have they come with much hardships?”

He takes a breath, searching for his words carefully. Though still letting little pass upon his face. “Tellius is… a fragmented land. One that has known much conflict to form it’s distinctions, though never to the detriment of the land in its entirety. The past centuries have brought change for many peoples. From union and discord alike. Relics change hands, passivity is challenged with open hostility, nations form and dissolve, a new people are born to be mutually scorned by those who brought them to be... Tellius is that sort of place.”

"That is not the answer I had wished for…" There was little she could glean from his response that struck Altina as positive. The future had thus far avoided total destruction, but it must have also fallen so short of the ideal they dreamed. Still, there was one facet of his words that gave her hope. Something that confirmed without doubt what she saw in the little empress. "But perhaps there is something good to speak of still. There are children who will be born of beroc and laguz?"

His eyes dart away from her, back to his hands where he starts to run them over each other. A startlingly telling sign from someone so stoic a moment prior. 

"They may. But not without much hardship." His response is short and solemn, coupling his hands in illustrating his discomfort with her questioning.

“I see… and yet the children born of myself and Lehran- They have continued to guide Begnion. Surely that must mean something? Surely Begnion will overcome."

She steps forward, bridging the space between herself and Lehran. She wishes to reach out to him. For her touch to bring down every wall he has surrounded himself with. But he turns away at the sight of her movement. His back half facing hers, hands gripping the crenellations, as he looks back on the scenery below.

His next words are, again, carefully chosen. “My lady, the only known ancestor of our empress is you. You alongside two other heroes valiantly defeated the dark god and established the country of Begnion. You would go on to marry a beorc husband, and your granddaughter would become the first apostle. She would establish Begnion as the goddess led empire it is today.”

What he had committed spoke louder than anything he explained thus far. Altina’s kingdom would erase it’s collaborative history between beorc and laguz. Her true husband, forgotten, and their descendents inheritance misplaced. It would not be the world Ashera had asked for, despite their unity.

Altina lets out a troubled sigh. “I see…” There’s another pause in their conversation, this time to accommodate her own thoughts. “Then what of Lehran? Do the histories make any mention of him or his medallion?”

A wry smile crosses Sephiran’s face, still dodging her eyes as he responds. “Lehran was said to have died hundreds of years ago leaving his bronze relic in the care of his tribe.”

Altina meets his words with palpable confusion. Unsure of where his story will take her next, but already knowing it will not end well. 

Sephiran’s grip on the stone tenses with his knuckles taking a stark shade of white. His next breath is audible and labored, like a brace before setting a broken limb. ”It is hard to say now, though. The herons and their history were all but entirely eliminated some twenty years prior. The whereabouts of his medallion, unknown.”

“No! Oh my Goddess- why? Lehran, _why!?_ And how can you be so-” She reaches to grab him, pull him closer and make him look at her. All desires of closeness rooted in sympathy absolving to anger and confusion. She desperately wishes to see something beyond his impassioned words in those sea green eyes.

“Ah!” Sephiran is startled in more ways than one. His strained guard is fully shaken by her outburst, and his body is unused to her visceral grip. 

“Say something Lehran!” She punctuates with another hard jostle. 

His words come out in a frantic pace, a stark contrast to the composure he held himself with prior. "Altina you must know this was an outcome I never desired! Please don't ask anything more of me. You don't understand what it's been like to-”

“I don’t understand!?" Her grip tightens further, her eyes filling with anger while a grimace crosses Sephiran’s face. "What is there to understand other than how much you’ve changed? How could you act so calm, so callous, over something so horrific?”

She could see something in him. Some bubbling pain come to surface, but the way he still held her at a distance with this façade, this act of uncaring observation, it drove her mad.

It's then that Sephiran's eyes flash from pain to anger in turn. It's startling. An expression she had never witnessed on his once gentle soul. He shakes free of her grasp, taking hold of his freshly reddened forearm. Shoulders tensing before his outburst.

“My dear you were not there to live it! You and I were in the spring of Tellius. A spring we fought and bled for, but with fruits forthcoming nonetheless. But I have lived through many seasons, and now, I am Tellius’s Winter.”

A gust swirls the falling snow into a flurry. It's the only sound that dares break the silence that has fallen between them. With her rage fading, Altina shivers in the gale, her hands rising to cover her bare shoulders as she is thoroughly taken aback by her former lover.

“Oh, how you’ve become so cold and brittle- sharp even.” She mutters, her eyes wide and cast downward. “How could you possibly be my beloved?”

He lets out a light laugh followed by a long, tired sigh. “I told you prior, I am Sephiran. A man of the modern era." He grumbles. "Take comfort in knowing little else of me.” 

“Hmph.” She responds with a noise of contempt, exhaustion making it difficult to muster much else. “So then… that’s it, is it? We start as strangers and end as strangers?”

“Altina, please. Go.” He tries.

There’s a genuine plea in his voice. It almost takes her over in anger again that one of his few moments of sincerity would be reserved for asking her to leave. But she resists- not out of mercy, but simply being too tired to maintain this pointless charade with him.

“I will then.” She bites out before turning her back to start her descent down the castle stairs.

“Altina-” Sephiran calls out, just before she could storm out too far.

She turns to meet his eyes- not honoring his call with any verbal acknowledgement. Just a look communicating the last vestiges of her patience. 

“Altina…” He repeats, quieter and hesitant. “Hold onto the joy my lady Sanaki has given you. Know the joys of peace you fought for. And…” He swallows, faltering in his final words. “Don't concern yourself with the future."

Without another utterance, he watches as Altina turns away, her body quickly disappearing down the steps. The chilled winter gale gave Sephiran his last look of her as her lilac strands whip in the breeze before disappearing in kind.

**Author's Note:**

> At first I couldn't believe this was the way they chose to implement Sephiran into Heroes, but really, the more I thought about it, the more this felt like Intsys' birthday present to me specifically. I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
> 
> Title (and a good deal of inspiration) comes from the song "I Am the Winter" by The Family Crest. 
> 
> Find me on Twitter @DCMCboxers !


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